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Introduction and Processor Specs

Introduction

The AMD Athlon FX line of processors was first introduced WAY back in September of 2003 with the release of the 940-pin FX-51 processor running at 2.2 GHz.  At the time, it was the only desktop processor to NOT run on the 754-pin socket.  My, how times have changed.

AMD released their dual core processor line up in May of 2005, just over 7 months ago.  At that time, the flagship processor brand, the Athlon 64 FX, remained a single core processor, with AMD stating that single core CPUs were still the best for gaming.  Most reviews found that indeed the FX-55 running at 2.6 GHz was faster than the X2 4800+ processor running at 2.4 GHz in nearly all gaming applications.  The FX-57 released earlier this year increased that gap a bit more.

With today's release of the Athlon 64 FX-60 processor, AMD is saying to the world, "we are ready for dual-core gaming." 

AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 Specifications

The Athlon 64 FX-60 processor is pretty much a speed bump of the already existing X2 line up of dual core processors from AMD.  The specifications of the latest AMD processors is seen in this table:

Model	Cores	Frequency	L2 Cache
FX-60	2	2.6 GHz	1MB x 2
FX-57	1	2.8 GHz	1MB
FX-55	1	2.6 GHz	1MB
X2 4800+	2	2.4 GHz	1MB x 2
X2 4600+	2	2.4 GHz	512KB x 2
X2 4400+	2	2.2 GHz	1MB x 2
X2 4200+	2	2.2 GHz	512KB x 2
X2 3800+	2	2.0 GHz	512KB x 2
A64 4000+	1	2.4 GHz	1MB

As you can see, the Athlon 64 FX-60 takes the top frequency of all the dual core processors in AMD's lineup, but is still 200 MHz slower than the top single core processor, the FX-57. 

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The FX-60 remains a 939-pin CPU and will run on a voltage ranging from 1.35-1.40v.  It is still manufactured on the 90nm process as all of AMD's dual core processors are.  No other specific information was provided to us from AMD prior to launch.  We'll update this page with more information as we get it.

What can we expect from the FX-60?  With a higher frequency than the 4800+, we should have the fastest available dual core processor in our hands and we will probably see gaming performance at least on par with the FX-55 processor.  Let's start with the benchmarks.

Next Page - Benchmarking Methodology and System Setup

Review Index:
- Select - Summary Introduction and Processor Specs Benchmarking Methodology and System Setup Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra and Everest Application: DivX, MP3 and Data Compression Professional: CineBench 2003 Professional: SPECviewperf 8.0 Scientific: ScienceMark 2.0 Gaming: 3DMark 2001: SE and 3DMark05 Gaming: Far Cry, FEAR and Call of Duty 2 Multitasking: Scenario 1 Multitasking: Scenario 1+ Multitasking: Scenario 2 Power Consumption and Conclusions